r the sake of self, he is also born into
evils of every kind. Is there love or mercy in those loves? Does the man
make anything of defrauding or defaming or hating another even to death,
or of committing adultery with his wife, or of being cruel to him out of
revenge, the while having the desire in mind to get the upper hand of all
and to possess the goods of all others, thus regarding others in
comparison with himself as insignificant and of little worth? To be
saved, must he not first be led away from these evils and thus be
reformed? As has been shown above in many places, this can be
accomplished only in accordance with many laws of divine providence. For
the most part these laws are unknown and yet they come of divine wisdom
and at the same time of divine love, and the Lord cannot act contrary to
them, for to do so would result in destroying man, not in saving him.

[2] Look over the laws which have been set forth, bring them together,
and you will see. According to those laws there is no direct influx from
heaven but one mediated by the Word, doctrine and preaching; and since
the Word, to be divine, had to be composed wholly in correspondences,
inevitably there are dissensions and heresies. The tolerance of them is
also in accord with the laws of divine providence. Furthermore, when the
church itself has taken for essentials what pertains only to the
understanding, that is, to doctrine, and not what pertains to the will,
that is, to life, and what pertains to life is not made the essentials of
a church, then man is in complete darkness for understanding and wanders
like one blind, striking against things constantly and falling into pits.
For the will must see in the understanding and not the understanding in
the will, or what is the same, the life and its love must lead the
understanding to think, speak and act, and not the reverse. Were the
reverse true, the understanding might out of an evil and even diabolical
love seize on what comes by the senses and demand that the will do it.
What has been said may show whence dissensions and heresies come.

[3] Yet it has been provided that everyone, in whatever heresy he may be
intellectually, may still be reformed and saved if he shuns evils as sins
and does not confirm heretical falsities in himself. For by shunning
evils as sins the will is reformed and through it the understanding is,
which emerges for the first time then out of obscurity into light. There
are three e